英国文学选读复习资料

Part I The Middle Age

Chapter 1 the Anglo-Saxon period (449-1066)

1. Beowulf（贝奥武甫）: England’s national epic.（第一部民族史诗）

2. artistic feature: ① using alliteration

② using metaphor and understatement

Chapter 3 Geoffrey Chaucer (ca1343-1400)

1.Geoffrey Chaucer is the father of English poetry and one of the most greatest narrative（叙事）poets of England.

2.首创双韵体. tonico-syllabic verse. 运用London dialect.

3. writing style: wisdom, humor, humanity.

4.代表作：The Canterbury Tales-----In this book, Chaucer created a strikingly brilliant and picturesque panorama of his time and his country. In this poem Chaucer’s realism, trenchant irony and freedom of views reached such a high level of power that it had no equal in all the English literature up to the 16th century. But Chaucer was not entirely devoid of medieval prejudices. [乔叟为他那个时代和国家勾勒出一幅生机勃勃而又充满诗情画意的社会百态图。在他的这部现实主义诗歌中，他将自己的讽刺艺术和宽广视野展现的淋漓尽致，使该作品在16世纪前的英国独树一帜。但是没能脱离中世纪的偏见。

Part II The Renaissance（文艺复兴）

1.时期：during the 16th century（1550---1642）

2.国家：Greek and Roman. Also England in drama.

3.定义：The term Renaissance originally indicated a revival of classical arts and science after the dark ages of medieval obscurantism.

4.类型：drama and canto（诗章）.

5.key work: ① humanism --- admire human beauty and human achievement.

②Thomas More--- Utopia in 1516.

③Francis Bacon--- the great English scientist and philosopher.

④ Christopher Marlowe--- the greatest of the pioneers of English drama

⑤ Edmund Spenser(埃德蒙·斯宾塞)----The Faerie Queene（仙后）

Chapter 5 William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

1. He is the greatest of English authors, the world’s pre-eminent dramatist.

2. One of the first founder s of realism.

3. A master hand at realistic portrayal of human characters and relations.

4.四大悲剧: ①Hamlet②Othello③King Lear④The Tragedy of Macbeth.

5.创作阶段: ①comedy:1590-1600②tragedy:1601-1608③tragicomedies:1609-1612

22年写了37plays,2 narrative poems,154sonnets.

6. Hamlet: It is the profoundest expression of Shakespeare’s humanism and criticism of contemporary world.

The character of Hamlet. 1. A humanist, free from prejudices and superstitions. Loving the world instead of the heaven. 2. Treat people with love. Disgusted w ith uncle’s drunkenness. Shocked by mother’s shallowness. 3. Intellectual genius. Close observer. “ Denmark is a prison”. 4. The melancholy of Hamlet—the key note of Hamlet’s character. He is too sophisticated to degrade his nature to the conventional role of a stage revenger.

Contrast is an important structural principle in Hamlet. Shakespeare’s plays are generally